Few details shared about budget and taxes

Business leaders didn't learn many specifics from lawmakers' mid-term report

Mar. 18, 2013

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger and legislative leaders responded to questions about health care, funding priorities, tax increment districts and keeping young Vermonters in the state after they finish school during a breakfast meeting Monday of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce. / NANCY REMSEN/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff Writer

The March breakfast gathering of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce is billed as an opportunity for business leaders to quiz legislative leaders about where their more-than-half-completed session is headed.

However, if chamber members came Monday expecting lots of detailed insight into the 2013 session, they left disappointed. The panel — Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, House Speaker Shap Smith, Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell and special guest panelist Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger — didn’t divulge the choices anticipated about the budget for state government and what that might mean for revenues. Those big decisions have yet to be made.

Surprisingly, the audience didn’t ask about the one tax increase that has momentum: a tax on gasoline to help the agency keep up with road and bridge repairs that the House Transportation, Ways and Means and Appropriation committees have all voted to support.

Catherine Z. Davis, director of government and media relations for the Chamber, explained, “We have been talking to our members for five years about declining transportation revenues.”

“Infrastructure is so tied to economic development,” she added, “that they get that one.”

Lt. Gov. Scott suggested new revenues weren’t a given to address the state’s continuing budget challenges.

“Many people just assume we have to raise revenues,” Scott said. “We have to prioritize first.” He predicted “some initiatives are going to have to fall by the wayside,” but didn’t specify.

Speaker Smith said the guiding philosophy for the House was to direct resources where they could make the biggest difference. He said early childhood education was an example of a good investment. That’s one Gov. Peter Shumlin put on the table, but with a funding mechanism that has proven unpopular with legislators.

“Prioritizing our money, deciding where we are getting return on our investments, is an easy thing to say and an incredibly difficult thing to do,” Smith suggested.

Sara Byers, president of Leonardo’s Pizza and the panel’s moderator, asked legislative leaders to provide an update on the health insurance exchange, an online marketplace that small businesses will have to use to purchase health coverage beginning next year.

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Sen. Campbell said he worried that if small businesses choose to drop health insurance for their workers, as they can without penalty under the new exchange program, many employees will decide the penalty for being uninsured is cheaper than the cost of coverage.

“Are we going to end up with a lot of folks who are uninsured?” Campbell asked.

Smith suggested many families will pay based on their income: “For them, the exchange will actually be a good thing.”

He said he hears many small-business owners worrying about whether the new marketplace will be ready to operate. “We are monitoring that,” Smith said. “And we are doing some contingency planning.”

The panel also responded to a question on tax increment financing, a concept Smith said wasn’t popular in the House, in part because it can be used only by larger communities.

Burlington Mayor Weinberger acknowledged the tool’s limitation, but urged lawmakers to make it work for communities that can use it.

Responding to the final question on how government could support an entrepreneurial economy, Smith suggested business leaders take advantage of Vermont’s easy-to-reach public officials.

“Use the fact that you can tell your stories to government officials,” Smith said. “Those stories will make a difference.”

Campaign finance

It’s hard to make everyone happy when writing a bill that will govern the financing of campaigns, but the Senate Government Operations Committee came up with a measure that its members could all support and that interest groups have given grudging praise.

What’s to like in the bill? You can decide for yourself by reading it beginning on page 220 of the March 15th Senate Calendar.

Here’s what political activists and a consumer advocate had to say.

Ryan Emerson, spokesman for the Vermont Democratic Party, says the bill “takes a critical step forward in confronting the corrosive effects of shadowy Super PACs on our democratic process. Under this bill, millionaire donors can no longer hide behind the scenes as they spend unlimited amounts of money in an attempt to affect the outcomes of our elections.”

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The bill requires disclosure of the names of big contributors to political committees — including independent, expenditure only political committees commonly called Super PACs — who make possible big media buys. One threshold for disclosure is providing 25 percent of all contributions to a political committee.

Robert Millar, executive director of the Vermont Progressive Party, said, “The bill has so much good in increased transparency.” He’s referring, for example, to the dramatically increased number of reports candidates would need to file, particularly in election years.

Instead of monthly reports beginning in the summer before an election, the bill calls for monthly reports beginning in January of an election year, switching to every two weeks in July.

Republican Party Chairman Jack Lindley also praised the reporting requirements: “Disclosure is the most appropriate way to understand what is going on.”

Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, also praised the expanded reporting and other disclosure provisions.

“If this bill is passed, voters will eventually have a lot more useful information about where candidates and political action committees are getting their money,” Burns said.

“The bill also reestablishes limits on campaign contributions that are for the most part reasonable,” Burns added. “The final version of the bill passed by the Government Operations Committee was certainly a vast improvement over earlier drafts that would have allowed wealthy individuals and corporations even greater influence over elections.”

The contributions limits were the most contentious provisions in the bill, said Senate Government Operations Vice Chairman Anthony Pollina, P/D-Washington.

He was prepared to reject the bill if the committee had stuck with contributions higher than in place today.

Instead, the committee endorsed:

• Smaller contributions for state representatives: $750 from a single source or political action committee, compared with $2,000 today.

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• Smaller contributions for state senators: $1,500 from a single source or political action committee, compared with today’s $2,000.

• Bigger contributions for statewide candidates: $3,000 from a single source of political action committee, up from $2,000 today.

The bill says the contribution levels could be reviewed every two years and adjusted based on the consumer price index.

Progressive Party Executive Millar would have preferred even smaller contributions. The agreed-upon levels “are more than we would like, but you really can’t get outraged about those numbers,” Millar said.

The GOP’s Lindley, however, dislikes the contribution limitations. He says low levels force candidates to depend upon and become “beholden to” political action committees.

Most everyone welcomes the bill’s directive that the Secretary of State’s Office move to an electronic filing system with a searchable database by 2015. Emerson of the Democratic Party called that “a much-needed development.”

What’s missing in the bill — a significant omission for Pollina and other Progressives — is a ban on corporate contributions to candidates.

“I have been a supporter of this,” Pollina acknowledged, but added, “I don’t want the bill to die over this.”

Before coming up for debate in the full Senate, the bill has made a side trip so the Senate Appropriations Committee could review the $100,000 expenditure the Senate Government Operations panel proposed giving the secretary of state to begin work on the electronic filing system.